* Any processed, ready-to-eat (or just add water, just heat, whatever) thing sold in an unsealable container: One serving size is the whole container

* Anything else: Set up a Nielsen-style survey of people's eating habits over say ~1,000 households. Record how much is eaten of any given item per person, per day. Average the results, hey presto -- there is your serving size. Rinse and repeat annually based on the previous year's results. Not enough data for a given food? Use the serving size of the closest food in the database, nutritionally speaking.

* Restaurant food: Nutrition info isn't calculated from your specially hand-prepared item made specifically for testing. Ten samples are chosen randomly and anonymously (samples are taken from random branches of your restaurant chain and ordered as if you are a normal member of the public), then the results averaged.

* No rounding down of any bad-for-you figures (eg. 0.478g of fat is 0.5g or 1g, not 0g)

* No rounding up of any good-for-you figures (eg. 0.27g of fiber is not 0.5g or 1g, it is 0.2g or 0g)

* No bundling of ingredients (it's not "spices" or "flavorings", it is the actual names of the items you put in there)

* No beautifying / rebranding of ingredient names where they are not significantly nutritionally different from existing ingredients (it's not "Valencia oranges", it's "oranges"; it's not "Chilean sea bass", it's "Patagonian toothfish".)

* No using misleading references (eg. if your product wouldn't ordinarily contain fat, no labeling your product "a fat-free food" -- we all know that soda is fat-free and lard is sugar-free, thanks very much.)

* No misleading product photography (ads must show the actual foodstuff in question, it must be taken as a random, anonymous sample from actual production, and it may not be "dressed / styled" or the photo retouched locally. (eg. you see the poorly-assembled abortion McDonalds actually sells you, not the puffy, fluffy, colorful and juicy-looking fake creation you see now.)

Pros:- You'd have realistic serving sizes for the first time ever.- As serving sizes change over time, so would the nutritional info, reflecting current behavior- Level playing field for manufacturers

Cons (from the manufacturer's perspective):- Expensive survey (but adding just one cent to the cost of each processed food item sold would cover this many, many times over)- Cost of changing packaging (but in our computerized, digital world, realistically this could be set to update automatically.- Sales of many processed foods would tank once misleading claims were removed and people could see the truth about what they were eating- It will never happen, ever.

How about someone in power on either side of the aisle stops spending over $10B per year in subsidies for the express purpose of flooding the market with the cheap crap we're eating ourselves to death with?

IMO, when you have a population getting much heavier from lousy diets, perhaps it's not best to adjust the 'serving size' to encourage this.

My generation tended to be a lot less heavy for various reasons, but top most was the very simple fact that we were not overwhelmed with snack and fast foods. They existed, but not in the incredible amounts like today. Nor was TV full of advertising encouraging us to gobble down every bit of delicious garbage displayed.

In 1965, no one in my town had ever heard of frozen pizza. 2014 and the grocery stores have whole freezers devoted to assorted versions of the stuff.

Wangiss:How about someone in power on either side of the aisle stops spending over $10B per year in subsidies for the express purpose of flooding the market with the cheap crap we're eating ourselves to death with?

No campaign contributions in that? Oh, okay.

Blech, whole can of worms being opened, but...

Most countries that produce food subsidize food production. This is to ensure that there's food. Believe it or not there's actually only a few edible products that can be stored in a raw state - wheat, feed corn, barley... Because without food society crumbles.

Anyhow it's really up to you to control what you decide to shove down your gullet. If you decide to eat too many calories of your favorite organic whatever BS food, you're still going to get fat(ter).

Misch:ReapTheChaos: Nothing on breakfast cereal? That's the main one I'd like to see standardized. As it stands they list a serving sizes of 1/2, 3/4, 2/3 and 1 cup, try comparing that while standing in the grocery store.

Cereals are sold by weight, not by volume. The volume is approximate. There's always a gram measurement.

Get a kitchen scale, it's your best friend.

I was talking about serving sizes, not package content. Serving size is measured by volume, like 1/2 or 3/4 cup. You can have two boxes of cereal, each listing the calories per serving, yet the serving size on each is different. Makes it a pain to compare one against the other.

IMO, when you have a population getting much heavier from lousy diets, perhaps it's not best to adjust the 'serving size' to encourage this.

My generation tended to be a lot less heavy for various reasons, but top most was the very simple fact that we were not overwhelmed with snack and fast foods. They existed, but not in the incredible amounts like today. Nor was TV full of advertising encouraging us to gobble down every bit of delicious garbage displayed.

In 1965, no one in my town had ever heard of frozen pizza. 2014 and the grocery stores have whole freezers devoted to assorted versions of the stuff.

Just because something happened together does not mean one caused the other. By the same argument, you can argue that it is cell phones causing people to get heavy because there are so many cell phones now whereas in 1965, nobody had heard of cellphones.

mr0x:Just because something happened together does not mean one caused the other. By the same argument, you can argue that it is cell phones causing people to get heavy because there are so many cell phones now whereas in 1965, nobody had heard of cellphones.

TwistedIvory:Theaetetus: Since when did anyone say that a tenth of a bagel was the entire portion size? I think you're reading something neither Subby nor I said.

Sounds pretty much like what the headline says, to me. That's definitely how I read it.

Theaetetus: As you note, the article said that the portion size was one half of a bagel plus one tenth of the other half. I.e. to eat a proper serving, you would have to, at some point, identify a tenth of a bagel half.

Or do basic math. "Let's see, serving size says 55g, but this bagel weighs 95g. Therefore I'll eat about half."However, that's problematic if the label doesn't identify the weight of each unit in the wrapper. I get that, that's a problem if you can't just intuit how 55g feels. In the US we have "servings per container," which I think is a decent method of approximation. Nobody is going to cut their bagel halves into tenths. That's a really silly assertion (much like it's silly to have an unrealistic portion size on the nutrition info).

Theaetetus: Yes, you're being pedantic, and you didn't read either Subby's statement nor my criticism correctly, and inferred something different. So, good jorb with the hypocrisy.

Actually, I was really trying to give us a diplomatic way out. I was trying to find a middle ground ("there are problems, I understand what they are and why they are problems but hooray, they're being addressed") so that we didn't have to go back and forth anymore. This was the cue to just say, "Ah hah, chap, I smell what you've been stepping in!" and then we chuckle a bit amongst ourselves and go on our merry ways.

You know... I know this has nothing to do with nothing but I keep getting drawn back to that picture of the Palin-ator up there. She is looking more and more like the white trash crackheads that used to skitter around my old hood. Like... she isn't my favorite person in the world but is she... um... ok? Seriously not looking healthy and her behavior is becoming increasingly erratic. Even by her standards.

Kind of frightening there was a real chance of her possibly becoming POTUS in a not so alternate universe.

mr0x:You cannot eat while you are exercising.Also, you usually don't eat a few hours before exercising.

I can jog in place really fast while eating lots of things. Probably not soup, but chips and cookies sure. I've actually done this once or twice when I got insanely hungry while exercising (and one time my weight still went down the next day)

And eating right before exercising isn't much of a problem unless you're going to the extreme with your exercise. Not a problem for the government recommended 30 minutes of moderate activity a day.

Shazam999:Wangiss: How about someone in power on either side of the aisle stops spending over $10B per year in subsidies for the express purpose of flooding the market with the cheap crap we're eating ourselves to death with?

No campaign contributions in that? Oh, okay.

Blech, whole can of worms being opened, but...

Most countries that produce food subsidize food production. This is to ensure that there's food. Believe it or not there's actually only a few edible products that can be stored in a raw state - wheat, feed corn, barley... Because without food society crumbles.

Anyhow it's really up to you to control what you decide to shove down your gullet. If you decide to eat too many calories of your favorite organic whatever BS food, you're still going to get fat(ter).

All completely true, but you and I are being coerced into spending a few dollars a month that goes to making more corn than everyone combined actually wants to eat. That creates an opportunity cost penalty to anyone who wants to manufacture food with anything other than the lowest nutritional-value foods in history. Why is $50 worth of spending power forced from the average taxpayer per year that (1) they could use to buy healthier food, thereby subverting (but certainly not negating) your personal responsibility argument; and (2) goes to make unhealthy food cheaper instead of healthy food?

Republican? Great. Shrink government or at least get those big government cronies making something healthy cheaper instead of corn syrup.Democrat? Great. Move some of that subsidy money to smaller, less privileged farm regions targeted in blue states or with historically disadvantaged populations that want to grow quinoa and kale.Statist? Great. It's your moral responsibility to make sure that the government is helping instead of harming all the people that corporations are fattening up.Libertarian? Great. I don't even need to tell you anything.

It's stupid to do what we're doing, or if you disagree we're at least doing it in a way that seems to be inarguably detrimental. I don't see the advantage of subsidizing one of the main sources of diabetes and obesity.

If the governmental control-freaks have their way, we'd only be allowed to eat carefully measured amounts the human-equivalent of those boring little dried nuggets that we feed our pets - you know. Iams, Hill's Science diet etc.

I don't really watch calories but have to watch sodium and I find the variable serving sizes a real pain. This can of soup is 2.5 servings while this other one that is the same size from another manufacturer is 4 servings. Try to guess the relative calories or salt content without a calculator and be my guess. And don't get me started on why a can of soup is more than one bloody serving as most people eat the whole thing.

I spend the time cooking more to be sure not to use prepared foods as all of them use enough sodium to kill a horse.

I can`t respect an article that calls pop tarts `pastries`, doesn`t say `bagel` but instead says `Toufayan bagel`, in one sentence says "Forget serving sizes and go for the halves or fourths method instead, like a normal person" and then uses a weird serving size (One cup is about one and a half Chobani containers)

gweilo8888:Personally, I think serving sizes should work something like this:

* Any processed, ready-to-eat (or just add water, just heat, whatever) thing sold in an unsealable container: One serving size is the whole container

* Anything else: Set up a Nielsen-style survey of people's eating habits over say ~1,000 households. Record how much is eaten of any given item per person, per day. Average the results, hey presto -- there is your serving size. Rinse and repeat annually based on the previous year's results. Not enough data for a given food? Use the serving size of the closest food in the database, nutritionally speaking.

* Restaurant food: Nutrition info isn't calculated from your specially hand-prepared item made specifically for testing. Ten samples are chosen randomly and anonymously (samples are taken from random branches of your restaurant chain and ordered as if you are a normal member of the public), then the results averaged.

* No rounding down of any bad-for-you figures (eg. 0.478g of fat is 0.5g or 1g, not 0g)

* No rounding up of any good-for-you figures (eg. 0.27g of fiber is not 0.5g or 1g, it is 0.2g or 0g)

* No bundling of ingredients (it's not "spices" or "flavorings", it is the actual names of the items you put in there)

* No beautifying / rebranding of ingredient names where they are not significantly nutritionally different from existing ingredients (it's not "Valencia oranges", it's "oranges"; it's not "Chilean sea bass", it's "Patagonian toothfish".)

* No using misleading references (eg. if your product wouldn't ordinarily contain fat, no labeling your product "a fat-free food" -- we all know that soda is fat-free and lard is sugar-free, thanks very much.)

* No misleading product photography (ads must show the actual foodstuff in question, it must be taken as a random, anonymous sample from actual production, and it may not be "dressed / styled" or the photo retouched locally. (eg. you see the poorly-assembled abortion McDonalds actually sells you, not the puffy, fluffy, colorful and juicy-looking fake creation you see now.)

Pros:- You'd have realistic serving sizes for the first time ever.- As serving sizes change over time, so would the nutritional info, reflecting current behavior- Level playing field for manufacturers

Cons (from the manufacturer's perspective):- Expensive survey (but adding just one cent to the cost of each processed food item sold would cover this many, many times over)- Cost of changing packaging (but in our computerized, digital world, realistically this could be set to update automatically.- Sales of many processed foods would tank once misleading claims were removed and people could see the truth about what they were eating- It will never happen, ever.

Shazam999:busy chillin': Activity level has to come into this some where. I knew a body builder guy that ate 9 meals a day and needed something like 12,000* calories a day to fuel his metabolism.

Exercise.

*talkin' out of ass, but I remember being floored by the number he said. I guess I could google it...nope don't care.

Exercise is overrated. A 5K run for me amounts to about 500 calories used. For the average person it's not enough to counteract the 3000-4000 calories they're eating daily.

/ Thank you girl with the nice tits that tried to keep up with me yesterday night.

Exercise also raises the basal metabolic rate, so you burn a lot more calories than from just the exercise itself. Pro athletes burn a ridiculous amount of calories because of this. Muscle mass (especially fast twitch) will burn a lot of calories simply by being there.

HotWingConspiracy:I just don't understand Michelle Obama's hatred for kids with diabetes. Think of all the cash this charity will miss out on when sodas can't have Serving Size: MEGA JUG

[3.bp.blogspot.com image 458x561]

"Juvenile" Diabetes refers to Type I Diabetes. That's the kind kids get (like I myself did) when a random auto-immune fluke causes the cells in the pancreas to produce insulin to be destroyed.

It has absolute nothing to do with the obesity-related, overeating-induced, Type II Diabetes, which is where you develop insulin resistance from doing things like guzzling a gallon of sugary soda.

As a Type I Diabetic, the conflation of these two is a perpetual annoyance. I've had more than one person state or imply something to the effect that it's my fault for having diabetes, when this person has no understanding of the difference between Type I and Type II.

There's no reason my disease, which totally strikes at random and without any lifestyle factors, should get a bad reputation or lose out on funding because of the lard-asses who brought it on themselves.